Category Archives: feasts

Waiting and Weakness – Christmas

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Holy Trinity Cathedral in San Francisco

The greatest pleasure and thrill of Christmas can’t be had without a little waiting, something like children of yore had to do, when their Christmas trees weren’t even ready for viewing until Christmas Day.

That thought is on my mind as I say Hello! to all the friends I see here at Pom Pom’s Childlike Christmas (blog) Party, a party for which we can show up four times over the next month! I had barely noticed the open invitation, with no time even to lay a finger aside of my nose, when she added me to the published guest list — I was signed up! I am happy to attend, Lord willing, by posting a blog each Wednesday.

It seems to me that the way we Eastern Orthodox Christians get into the Christmas spirit can be combined with the theme of children and simple pleasures that Pom Pom describes:

“Yesterday I asked my students, ‘Why the big greed festival over the holidays? Aren’t we fine right now? Don’t we have enough?’ …Here at Pom Pom’s Ponderings, we are going to think about the simple pleasures of the holidays, the childlike wonder that doesn’t involve the ka-ching ka-ching of the cash register….four holiday Wednesdays of posts that attend to the simple childlike thrills of Christmas. ….that babe in a manger and the children He loves and cherishes.”

The modern world likes to jump into Christmas immediately after Halloween or Thanksgiving, but the more traditional way to celebrate involves some Anticipation and Preparation. Children might think of it as Waiting and Getting Ready. Some of us have been in Advent, which we call the Nativity Fast, since November 15th.

I’m not experienced in helping children to forgo the treats that are pressed upon them in every shop and neighbor’s house at this time of year, but even before I found the Church and its traditions I tried to keep the family thinking ahead to a special Holy Day, and not just because of the presents.

We need some weeks to sing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel!” and for it to register in our minds that God’s people had to wait many generations and thousands of years for the coming of the Savior. A little bit of suffering in the form of doing without the usual quantity of food, or rich foods, (in the Orthodox Church we eat less, and almost vegan, when fasting) can make it more real for us that the world before Christ was suffering under the curse of sin. We feel our own weakness, too, when eating less, and that can soften our hearts.

Why the photo of Holy Trinity Cathedral above? My church and sister churches sponsor Advent retreats every year, usually a day or half a day when we can hear a lecture and attend services together to help us focus on the coming feast in a fruitful way. Last year I went to one at Holy Trinity and took the picture. (By the way, I saw the same flowering plant at a winery last week and still don’t know what it is.)

One children’s book that might contribute to a child’s understanding of time and the processes that are necessary preliminaries to accomplishing a goal, in particular a few points on the timeline of our salvation history, is The Tale of Three Trees, “a traditional folktale retold by Angela Elwell Hunt with illustrations by Tim Jonke.”

Three small trees stand on a hilltop and dream about what they might do when they are grown. One wants to be a treasure chest, one a sailing ship that carries kings, and one just wants to stay where it is and point to God.

It takes many years for them to get big enough to be cut for lumber and fashioned into items that play a part in the earthly life of our Lord. The first tree is made into a manger — and this first creation of wood that the Christ Child came in contact with establishes the story as one for Christmas.

All the trees feel initial disappointment and humiliation, none more so than the one that is made into a rude cross and used for violent purposes: “She felt ugly and harsh and cruel.” But in the end all of the trees realize the blessedness of being used for the glory of God, and the young reader is reminded of the reason a Baby was born at Bethlehem.

Even our Lord Jesus went through a period of preparation, growing up as a man for 30 years before He began His ministry, but He surely wasn’t idle during that time. As we wait for Christmas we can prepare our hearts by prayer and fasting and acts of love.

Those of us with families are blessed to have many possibilities under what might be the Acts of Love category. (They might even include some noise of cash registers, but I won’t say any more about that at this party.) I know I have cookie-baking, doll-clothes-sewing, decorating and menu-planning and making up beds on my list.

The truth is, I’m not very good at being child-like before Christmas. I feel so many responsibilities that children don’t have to concern themselves with, and I get pretty busy with all the fun type of preparations.

Somehow, though, all of that, when combined with participation in the church traditions and services, adds up to make me feel some of the longing and the weakness that are appropriate right now.

I’ll post on Wednesdays more about some of the simple pleasures that our family has enjoyed over the years, even while remembering that the fullness of joy, the acting like a child, will start on December 25th. And won’t it be wonderful!

Flowing from Easter – The Church Year

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I’m preparing for the expected blessing of having three dear and longtime friends as house guests at different times over the next two weeks. While my home is full of busyness and women’s talk, in The Orthodox Church we’ll be commemorating some of those events of the church year that are becoming more lovely to me with every cycle of the church calendar. And because I doubt I’ll even think of blogging while I am hostessing, I am looking ahead, blogging ahead.

In the years when I was first learning about Orthodoxy, I’m thankful I was able to participate quite a bit in various services throughout the seasons, so that I got a good foundation in how the intellectual knowing is the lesser part of a relationship with God. With every year that passes I see this more, and also feel my inability to convey in words this Reality that is Christ in His Church. Even the most eloquent and holy men and women would communicate by their entire persons, and relatively little by words, the Love that has been shed abroad in their hearts.

Still, their words are more eloquent than mine and express a deeper grasp of the realites by far, so I am depending on them to tell a little of how the day-to-day structure of the Church Year gives the grace of God. It all flows from the Resurrection. From the Orthodox Church in America site:

Although the first of September is considered the start of the Church year, according to the Orthodox Church calendar, the real liturgical center of the annual cycle of Orthodox worship is the feast of the Resurrection of Christ. All elements of Orthodox liturgical piety point to and flow from Easter, the celebration of the New Christian Passover. Even the “fixed feasts” of the Church such as Christmas and Epiphany which are celebrated according to a fixed date on the calendar take their liturgical form and inspiration from the Paschal feast.

Next week we have the Leavetaking of Pascha, which I love very much, because it always seems to me that I haven’t been able to sing enough times those exultant hymns of “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death.” Every year I become more familiar with some of the words and tunes, and try to learn a new one. “Why seek ye the living among the dead? Why mourn ye the incorrupt amid corruption?” On Leavetaking of Pascha we’ll repeat the Easter service in its entirety – and then won’t sing those hymns again until next year.

Even though we will still be in “the time of Easter” for another ten days, until Pentecost, we must say good-bye to the Feast of Feasts, so to speak, because we are coming up to the Ascension! Then we will update our greeting from “Christ is risen!” to “Christ is ascended!” the response to that being, “…from earth to heaven!”

In his book, The Year of Grace of the Lord, Fr. Lev Gillet tells at length the meaning of the Church Year. An excerpt from one paragraph, to which I have added breaks to make it more readable on the screen:

The liturgical year is, in fact, expressed as a calendar, but simply to identify it with a calendar would be totally inadequate. One could also say that the purpose of the liturgical year was to bring to the minds of believers the teachings of the Gospel and the main events of Christian history in a certain order. That is true, but this educational, pedagogical, function does not exhaust the significance of the liturgical year.

Perhaps we could say that its aim is to orient our prayer in a certain direction and also to provide it with an official channel which is objective, and even, in a certain way, artistic. This, too, is true, but the liturgy is more than a way of prayer, and it is more than a magnificent lyric poem.

The liturgy is a body of sacred “signs” which, in the thought and desire of the Church, have a present effect. Each liturgical feast renews and in some sense actualizes the event of which it is the symbol; it takes this event out of the past and makes it immediate; it offers us the appropriate grace, it becomes an “effectual sign,” and we experience this efficacy to the extent that we bring to it a corresponding inclination of our soul.

But still, this does not say everything. The liturgical year is, for us, a special means of union with Christ. No doubt every Eucharist unites us intimately with Christ, for in it he is “both he who offers and who is offered,” in the same way that every prayer, being the prayer of the members of the mystical body, shares in the prayer of him who is the head of the body and the only one whose prayer is perfect.

But, in the liturgical year, we are called to relive the whole life of Christ: from Christmas to Easter, from Easter to Pentecost, we are exhorted to unite ourselves to Christ in his birth and in his growth, to Christ suffering, to Christ dying, to Christ in triumph and to Christ inspiring his Church. The liturgical year forms Christ in us, from his birth to the full stature of the perfect man. According to a medieval Latin saying, the liturgical year is Christ himself, annus est Christus.

Fairy finery, honey and roses

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Many people were already in the church when I arrived about 11:00 p.m. on Saturday night. On the carpet in the transept opposite the choir several blankets and children were laid out. I bought a fat candle to have ready for the procession, but it wasn’t lit until an hour later, and in the meantime I was getting intoxicated by the honey-warm scent rising to my nose, feeling as though I was already breaking the fast with some rich dessert. It smelled richer than baklava.

Then the Easter lilies came into olfactory focus, blending with the beeswax. By this time my ears were full of the hymns reminding me of Christ’s rising from the tomb, in a garden, in a real place on the earth, because He was really a man of flesh and blood as we are. When He rose He must have noticed whatever flowers were blooming in that garden.

Camellia in our church garden during Holy Week

Families were arriving, and while most males were dressed in their “ordinary” best Sunday clothes, the clergy wore white vestments, and many women and girls had put together very springy and bright, often all-white, outfits. A score of little girls had flouncy skirts that would have been fancy enough for a ball, or for acting the role of a fairy in a drama. I was so happy for their being able to commemorate their Lord’s Resurrection by being their prettiest.

Even I had found a long and full eyelet skirt at a discount store, to wear with an odd assortment of other white things, and switched from black to flowered purse. There were lots of us, then, adding our white forms to the press of bodies, including the Eritreans who always wear beautiful white gauze. On this day more Eritrean men than usual wore their white gauze, too.

When the deacons and priests started around with censers, it was with the incense that is so heady I want to cry over it, knowing that “Jesus is fairer, Jesus is sweeter….” Is it made from roses? I must find out about this.

When we made our procession around the property — it was a longer route than merely around the church building — yes, there was some drizzle, but very fine, and not enough to put out anyone’s candle. We were singing our new Paschal processional hymn, which the choir tried to teach the rest of us last week, but I know I didn’t get it. Several of us noted as we were trailing along silently, too far behind in the train to hear the choir, that it had taken us ten years to learn the old Paschal hymn; it would have helped to have the choir members scattered along the line, interspersed with the rest of us and leading us.

But I think everyone was content. We were at Pascha! At one point we who were closer to the front of the long line could see across the lawn to a stream of worshipers at the end of the procession, and the view was stunning, their white garments reflecting the flickering candles they were holding up in the dark. There were hundreds of us! I didn’t think it seemed that crowded in the building.

Soon we arrived again at the doors of the church, at which the priest knocked, and then, “He is not here! He is risen!” When we went inside we heard as always on this night the Paschal homily of St. John Chrysostom, which he gave about 1600 years ago and which has never sounded sweeter to my ears, full as it is of the love and grace of God. As we float through Bright Week and through the next 50 days, its glad tidings will remind us to keep greeting one another with “Christ is risen!”

This year our Father Michael, who is over 80 years old, read the homily. Somehow his voice never weakens, and retains the strength and authority of a strong spirit. Every time he serves or preaches I am so thankful for the grace that enables him to keep going, because he is so dear. His heart is such that the message of this sermon is of the sort that would flow from his own pen and lips.

At every repetition of the phrase, “Hell [or it] was embittered,” Fr. Michael paused so that the congregation could answer with a shout: “It was embittered!” — a sort of boisterous participation that we all seem to enjoy this one time in the year.

In a hearty baritone, this is what he proclaimed:

If anyone is devout and a lover of God, let him enjoy this beautiful and radiant festival.

If anyone is a grateful servant, let him, rejoicing, enter into the joy of his Lord.

If anyone has wearied himself in fasting, let him now receive recompense.
If anyone has labored from the first hour, let him today receive the just reward.

If anyone has come at the third hour, with thanksgiving let him feast.

If anyone has arrived at the sixth hour, let him have no misgivings; for he shall suffer no loss.

If anyone has delayed until the ninth hour, let him draw near without hesitation.

If anyone has arrived even at the eleventh hour, let him not fear on account of tardiness.
For the Master is gracious and receives the last even as the first; He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour, just as to him who has labored from the first.

He has mercy upon the last and cares for the first; to the one He gives, and to the other He is gracious.

He both honors the work and praises the intention.
Enter all of you, therefore, into the joy of our Lord, and, whether first or last, receive your reward.

O rich and poor, one with another, dance for joy!

O you ascetics and you negligent, celebrate the day!
You that have fasted and you that have disregarded the fast, rejoice today!

The table is rich-laden: feast royally, all of you!

The calf is fatted: let no one go forth hungry!
Let all partake of the feast of faith. Let all receive the riches of goodness.

Let no one lament their poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed.

Let no one mourn their transgressions, for pardon has dawned from the grave.

Let no one fear death, for the Saviour’s death has set us free.
He that was taken by death has annihilated it!

He descended into Hades and took Hades captive!

He embittered it when it tasted His flesh! And anticipating this, Isaiah exclaimed: “Hades was embittered when it encountered Thee in the lower regions“.
It was embittered, for it was abolished!

It was embittered, for it was mocked!

It was embittered, for it was purged!

It was embittered, for it was despoiled!

It was embittered, for it was bound in chains!
It took a body and came upon God!

It took earth and encountered Ηeaven!

It took what it saw, but crumbled before what cannot be seen!
O death, where is thy sting?

O Hades, where is thy victory?
Christ is risen, and you are overthrown!

Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!

Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!

Christ is risen, and life reigns!

Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in a tomb!
For Christ, being raised from the dead, has become the first-fruits of them that have slept.

To Him be glory and might unto the ages of ages.

Amen.

As I finish this post, it is Bright Tuesday. I went to church, and the gospel for today was the story of Christ meeting some of His followers on the Road to Emmaus soon after His rising from the dead. The unfolding of the scene, and imagining the Lord walking alongside and hearing them telling about the recent events — then their eyes being opened, His vanishing from their sight…. They said, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us?” And I got chills.

The altar is open all during Bright Week.

Annunciation

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Today is the beginning of our salvation,
And the revelation of
the eternal mystery!
The Son of God becomes
the Son of the Virgin
As Gabriel announces
the coming of Grace.
Together with him let us cry
to the Theotokos:
“Rejoice, O Full of Grace,

the Lord is with you!”

The announcement by the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she would bear the Christ, the Son of God, is one of the twelve Great Feasts of the church year in Orthodoxy, and is celebrated exactly nine months before the celebration of the birth of the Christ Child, on March 25th. The words above are from a hymn that we sing on this feast.

Not long ago I read The Presence of Mary, a booklet by Fr. Alexander Schmemann in the St. Athanasius Study Series, published by Conciliar Press © 1988. In 26 pages the author discusses in depth the role of Christ’s mother in our salvation history, and sets it against “…the fundamental spiritual disease of our time [that] must be termed anthropological heresy.”

That last clause piqued my interest, too! I’ve been wanting to take the time to read the booklet again and write a real review about the truths that Fr. Schmemann helps to clarify, but that time is not now. However, the present moment and celebration does seem to be right for at least posting a quote from the book, as we contemplate her who is “blessed among women”:

“It is clear that an abstract and impersonal study of man posits a self-evident conclusion: man as total dependence. An equally abstract exaltation of man posits its a priori premise: man as total freedom. But both are revealed in the unique personal experience of Mary, an experience given to the Church and made into her experience, as one and the same truth about man.

“In Mary, the very notions of ‘dependence’ and ‘freedom’ cease to be opposed to one another as mutually exclusive. We are inclined to think that where there is dependence there can be no freedom, where there is freedom there can be no dependence. Mary, however, accepts, she obeys, she humbles herself before the living Truth itself, a Presence, a Beauty, a Life, a Call so overwhelmingly evident that it makes the notion of ‘dependence’ an empty one — or rather identical and coextensive with that of freedom. For as long as freedom is nothing but the other side of dependence — a protest, a rebellion against dependence — as long as freedom itself depends on dependence for its meaning, it is also an empty notion. Each time freedom chooses and accepts, it ceases to be freedom. Here, however, in the unique experience of Mary, freedom becomes the very content of dependence, the one eternally fulfilling itself in the other as life, joy, knowledge, communion, and fulness.

“Admittedly these are poor, inadequate, and clumsy human words about an experience, a vision, a reality which transcends all human words. But, having read them, look again at that woman who eternally stands at the very heart of the Church filling our hearts with a mysterious yet ineffable joy, making us repeat eternally that same salutation which she heard in the depth of her heart on the day of Annunciation: Rejoice!”

-Father Alexander Schmemann

(Icon by Mikhail Nesterov)